Vampire Hunter D Volume 18- Fortress of the Elder God (13 page)

“He’s 107 degrees. Probably due to that astral projection,” the hoarse voice remarked as D carried the boy into the treatment center.

-

On learning that Mr. Stow was missing from the recovery room, Mrs. Stow didn’t appear particularly surprised.

“He had a long list of grievances, that one did. Honeyed words would lead him right out of here. But I think he’ll be back presently. Don’t trouble yourselves over it.”

-

Ultimately a battle did unfold. The floor in front of the massive doors that D had tried unsuccessfully to enter took on silvery stains that immediately spread, forming five figures devoid of eyes, noses, and mouths, who then rose smoothly to their feet. They charged ahead like a wave of light. They didn’t move their legs, yet they continued forward without stopping. The five figures joined together in a single form. Crashing against the crease where the two doors met, the mass fell flat as if it were water, spread out, and quickly resumed its original shape. Though it tried to slip through the crack in liquid form, it wasn’t successful.

Perhaps the silvery stain had given up, because it slid off in the direction from which it’d come, and then halted. About sixty feet away stood a figure in black. It was unclear whether the stain recognized this as a perfect double of D. The silvery figures that quickly emerged from it raised hands that’d been transformed into weapons, seeking to slay the young man in black. When they closed to within six feet of him, he turned away from them. The back that carried his longsword turned a silvery hue. The instant the swords, axes, and scythes of the unflappable silver figures sank into him, the attackers reeled, finding terrible wounds had opened in the same locations on them. For the unholy ability that had reflected D’s deadly attack back at him had once again been put to use.

All of the figures dissolved on the floor. As the silver circle lay there like a puddle of water, the guardian walked over to it in silence. It was a heartbeat later that the stain flew up. It was a disk—but its edges were honed as sharp as any enchanted blade, making it a circular implement of death. A gleam of light lanced through the chest of the figure that had just mimicked its appearance.

When he landed on the floor about thirty feet away, the silver figure’s upper body began to slide off his lower half. Falling to the floor, it became a silvery semicircle, while the legs left standing also took the same shape and dropped to the floor.

A second later, the silver mass that had transformed into a weapon to slay its opponent split in two without a sound. Neither of them moved an inch, and after a short while had passed, a pair of figures appeared on the scene. Peering down at the silver remains with an expression so unsettling it defied description was the suckling. The old man behind him remained facing straight ahead with a vacant look in his eyes. Grinning savagely, the suckling took the old man by the hand and walked over to the iron doors.

Greeeee, screamed rusted gears. Greeeee, greeeee, greeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It was a tortured chorus that would make anyone want to cover their ears—like the cry of hinges that had rusted quietly for a million years. It was the pain of their iron flesh tearing.

Just look. The iron doors even D couldn’t part were now opening.

-

Sensing a presence, Maria opened her eyes and was shocked. On her right was Weizmann’s face. She was on a bed in the recovery room. The men were supposed to be sleeping out in the treatment center.

“What’s the meaning of this? Did you think you were gonna get lucky?”

“Not so loud,” the transport officer whispered. His eyes darted to Mrs. Stow, then Toto, then back to Maria.

“What do you want, then? I swear, I’ll yell so everyone can hear me. When officials from the Capital are involved in a scandal, they get shipped out to the Frontier, you know.”

“I’ve had it,” Weizmann said with a heavy sigh. “After letting the suckling get away, the career I was building up for myself will be driven into the ground. When I come back empty handed, I can look forward to exactly what you described.”

“So, what’s that to me? You’re starting to annoy me, mister, you know that?”

“I want you to make me feel better.”

“Excuse me?” Maria replied in disbelief. But at the same time, she’d figured that was what he was after.

“I’m finished anyway. And knowing that, it doesn’t matter what I do now. The least I can do is get one night’s worth of comfort.”

“Okay, baby,” Maria said, biting back her contempt as she stroked the head of the fast-tracked official from the Capital. Gently bringing her face to his cheek, she whispered into his ear in a low, steamy voice. “I’ll show you pleasure like you’ve never seen before. But it won’t be cheap.”

“You want money?” the flustered Weizmann said.

Maria was dumbfounded. “Of course! Your happiness alone isn’t gonna put money in my pocket. You don’t get something for nothing—that’s the way the world works.”

“How much?”

“That’s up to you. Ten dalas minimum. Special tricks will run you more.”

“Okay,” Weizmann said with a nod.

Suddenly, the transport officer climbed on top of her. A vicious elbow landed on the side of his head.

“We can’t do it here. Outside! Out!”

“But that’s no good. The enemy’s prowling around out there.”

Undeterred by the elbowing, he reached for her thighs and breasts. He couldn’t conceal his true nature.

“It’s a dangerous thing when a person throws their vanity out the window.”

As she pushed his hands away, Maria wondered what she was going to do. They couldn’t very well do it right there. But he was right about the danger outside.

“Okay,” she groaned.

At that instant, someone said almost the same thing in her head.

-

III

-

“What’s that?” D’s left hand cried out in a low voice. More than surprise or fear, its tone was one of fulfilled expectation.

“The voice of the god.”

D shot a glance at the door, then broke into a run. His goal was obvious.

The change came all at once. The ceiling and floor switched places, and the walls laughed out loud as they stretched and shrank. Every stone in the floor flipped over in a second, and the stairway became an infinite spiral spinning into space. Going down the staircase would bring you to the floor above, while racing up it took you down into the dungeon. And inhuman cries and groans filled the air like a symphony.

“Looks like one of the assassins managed to wound the god,” the left hand remarked with amusement as they traversed a stairway that twisted and turned through the darkness. “It probably lost the ability to wipe out the forces outside—its ‘arm,’ as it were. If so, they’ll launch an all-out attack tomorrow.”

Unexpectedly the stairs beneath him gave way. D was falling through the darkness, along with the stone steps that had climbed into the sky. The Milky Way swirled in the distance. His left hand reached up over his head. The tiny mouth that opened in the palm of his hand began sucking in air with a whistling sound. Before long, the air it consumed took on a color, becoming the darkness itself. Even the stars of the Milky Way were swallowed up. Like a curtain being torn down, the darkness was squeezed into a single stream that disappeared into the maw, leaving an ashen space behind it.

As D continued to fall, four sets of footprints left white trails far off in the distance. The footsteps were falling right along with him.

“Oh, I see. You chose this space on purpose, eh?” the hoarse voice said with admiration. “From here, we can get closer to it. But the energy coefficient will become an imaginary number. One or the other is gonna be absorbed by the Dirac sea.”

“Link me to where those footprints are headed,” D said brusquely.

“That’s crazy! The Laplace connection is still too weak. If you push it, you’ll be the one who gets banished to the negative zone.”

“I underestimated them. Link me right away.”

Indecipherable curses shot through the gray world. And D dissolved into that same hue.

-

He was standing on a stone floor. The room had been made from enormous boulders. But the floor wasn’t a tightly fitted pattern of hand-worked stone. No lavishly frescoed ceiling or walls existed here. Rough-hewn boulders had been piled haphazardly, distorting all balance and order in the fortress. And it was swimming in blue light.

Turning, D saw huge iron doors. Those same doors. And they were open so that anyone might come or go as they pleased. Someone had made it through them.

“The assassins from outside took a different dimension there,” the left hand said. “Meaning what they encounter there will be others in league with the god.”

Whether that conjured an image in D’s brain of the suckling and Mr. Stow walking away was unclear.

“It’s still squawking, eh?”

His hand was referring to the continuing screams. Screams that could be heard from the depths of the encircling darkness. They weren’t echoes—they were coming from between the iron doors.

“Apparently it’s fallen back.”

The stone walls around D writhed. Space itself was warping with the god’s pain.

D advanced without saying a word. Stretching on forever, the stony dungeon was uninhabited. Eventually the walls and ceiling were lost from view. D merely followed the voice. A stone plain sealed away in darkness—and D was a traveler there.

“Whoever he is, that assassin’s pretty good. That someone other than you could manage to get in here, let alone deal the god some—what is it?”

Halting, D shot a look up ahead.

The floor was quaking. A rumbling passed through the ground.

In the depths of the darkness, something colossal and pale wriggled. A hundred yards ahead of him, it twisted and thrashed like the tail of a dying snake. As the Hunter drew closer, it became clear that it was a tentacle. The jolts to the floor were violent. If it’d been striking frequently and with full force instead of merely writhing, D might not have been able to stand. The tentacle, glowing with phosphorescence, had been severed cleanly. Nearly perfectly circular, the cut was ten feet in diameter, while the end of the tentacle stretched far, far into the darkness and out of sight.

“It’s gotta be three miles long. Can’t believe it’s been sliced straight through,” the hoarse voice remarked in amazement, for this was part of the god.

D’s hair swayed. The wind was blowing past him.

“What’s this?” the left hand gasped.

The wind was gradually gathering force.

“This ain’t good. The god’s cries of pain have become a wind. Run for it!”

From off in the distance, a sound like a stirring crowd could be heard approaching. The hem of the Hunter’s pitch-black coat flapped so hard it seemed it would be torn to pieces.

“Run for it!”

Moving at a velocity of more than two thousand miles per hour, the wind assailed D’s location ten seconds later.

-

“It should be clear now,” said a muffled voice.

Pushing away his shelter, D stepped outside. The plain paved in stone lay under a normal breeze now. A gentle breeze. Beside D lay the refuge he’d just exited. The god’s limb, with a hole carved into it just large enough to fit a single person.

“I don’t think it even budged in that wind. It sure did stand up well,” the hoarse voice said in amazement.

“Do you think you’d blow yourself away with your own breath?” D responded.

“Oh, I get it,” the voice replied, apparently understanding now.

So, the two-thousand-mile-per-hour gale was a sigh of suffering exhaled by the god?

D trained his gaze on the distance. The cries of pain continued. Saying nothing, he began to walk. It was unclear how much time passed—because what flowed here wasn’t the time of the outside world. When was dawn? Ahead of D, darkness was followed by still more darkness.

“Hey,” the hoarse voice said in a bid to get his attention. It’d just glimpsed a fallen figure far off in the distance.

His gait never slowing, D went over to the body. Both D and the hoarse voice had undoubtedly made out the face of the supine figure. Lying on the stone, his lower half stained with fresh blood, was the suckling. Bending down, D checked his pulse and pupils before bringing his left hand over to the man’s waxy countenance.

“Give it a try.”

A face floated to the surface of his palm.

“It’s no use—he’s dead.”

Ignoring the hoarse voice’s objection, the Hunter pushed its tiny face against the suckling’s. Within five seconds, the suckling’s corpse opened its eyes. D was reflected in its muddied pupils.

“I thought . . . you’d come,” he said, working the words through desiccated lips. His voice, that of the departed, was more youthful than his appearance suggested.

“I’m glad . . . the last person I saw . . . was you. I got stabbed . . . by some assassins from outside . . . There were . . . two of them.”

D remained silent. He didn’t tell the man not to talk, for he knew there was no chance of saving him.

“They were . . . tough . . . Cut off . . . one of the god’s . . . arms . . . But they paid . . . a price . . . The one who cut it . . . got it a lot worse . . . than the one who didn’t . . . The god doesn’t take kindly . . . to being touched by outsiders.”